The Attic

One

Daer Mummy,

You carnt read this cos youve gone but this is for shcool and I have to rite a leter to a reltive

 

Mums are reltives says the teachur

 

I wont mail this dont no the adres but I hop your happy

 

I mis you mummy and mimi says not to tel thins are bad

 

Thins aren bad

 

Lov,

 

John

 

Decembr 5 1946

Underneath the creased paper was a worn notebook, the first page half-filled with neat handwriting.

Mum,

Well, I suppose this is silly. What do I say? Do I just keep this letter?

 

I don’t know really. Maybe I’m writing this to myself.

 

Alright then, Dear Paul Pretending To Be Mum.

 

Well that’s even worse isn’t it? Referring to myself in the third person?

 

I shouldn’t have used this notebook to write you letters. You, as in Mum, or not Mum, whatever. I shouldn’t have to justify myself in my own bloody notebook!

 

Anyway. It felt like a good idea at the time but I think I’ve just wasted the first page of my book. I’ll stop writing now.

Maybe there was some kind of logic to the documents in the box.

SONGBOOK

 

By John W. Lennon

 

Hello Little Girl

When I see you every day

I say, mm mm, hello little girl

Though I try to break away*

I say, mm mm, hello little girl

 

*When you’re passing on your way

John chuckled slightly. He remembered that, as he did his outrage when Paul had gone and changed a line of lyrics, though he now admitted the second version was much better.

            He shook his head, sitting back onto the floor and disturbing a cloud of dust. The box had been moved from one attic to another, and hadn’t been opened since Kenwood. It was the great big box of everything they’d written; Paul’s notebooks and diaries donated to John for him to read.

            He’d never really had the time. Or maybe he was too scared to see Paul’s uncensored thoughts. Paul’s warning came back from all those years ago: “I’ve written things about you when I was cross, so don’t take it badly.”

            Shit, it was Paul’s diary. How was he supposed to just pick it up and read about Paul’s most intimate thoughts between the ages of fourteen and nineteen? That was his age when he’d finished it and John had asked what he was writing.

            “Oh, nothing. You can have it,” Paul had said.

            John wondered whether Paul remembered he’d given it. This could completely destroy his reputation and land him in jail if it were found. Taking a deep, shaky breath, John placed the book back into the box.

            There were still things underneath that John hadn’t looked at, letters, packages, all kinds of things whose existence had been erased by time. He had no idea what could be in there. Fuck, John was getting old. Forty seemed a lofty and weary age.

            He pushed the box back into the recesses of the attic; Yoko would be wondering where he’d gotten to. He’d only come up here to look for a book he’d been searching for, and the attic of the Dakota’s building seemed like the place to find it, full of John’s things that Cyn had given him to take away, and that he’d never looked at.

            A shiver went down John’s back. Could Cynthia have looked in that box, and understood what had happened between him and Paul?

            John told himself to drop it. It was all over, it had been over for a while now; there was no more John and Paul. He should stop thinking about McCartney altogether, but that would prove difficult, as he was coming to visit in a week.